Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Happy Birthday Stuart for the 17th
Well we arrived at Alor Setar in Malaysia with Peter still taking panadol to keep his temperature down and Dell still scratching very sore ankles, caught the ferry back to Langkawi – slept all the way and finally made it back to the boat and were very happy to see Cilantro who were very concerned at the state of our health! On the Sunday night Peter’s temperature peaked at 103.4 and I was having to put wet tablecloths on him to try to bring it down. The whites of his eyes were also a sort of red colour. The next day Peter felt better and his temperature was back to normal (after a week) and we had hired a car with Cilantro to do some shopping so we dropped Peter off at the hospital on the way to town thinking we would pick him up on the way back. But when we went back to get him we found that he had been admitted and was on a drip and having blood tests taken! It turned out he had hemorrhagic dengue fever. (remember that little trip in Siem Reap – we think that’s where he got bitten – it is a day time mosquito). He had eight bags of IV saline drips and had blood tests taken every six hours and was told that if he bled from the gums, nose, ears etc to let them know immediately as he could also bleed internally. His blood platelettes continued to drop for a day or so and he was told that if they went down too far he would need a blood transfusion. As you can imagine it was a scarey few days – he was in there for 4 days and James and Sandra of Cilantro were a tower of strength for me and we were so grateful for their support – thanks heaps guys!! By the way the entire bill for all the treatment and four days in hospital came to around $155 AUS!! And the care was extremely good. And the good news is Peter cant get that particular dengue again! The Health Department came out to the marina and fogged the area for mosquitos and even fogged down the arm where our boat is!!

Also in the hospital was a young married man who 15 days earlier had been spat on by a King Cobra (not bitten – spat on his arm and leg) and he was in a very bad way and seemed to be going down hill. They were going to evacuate him to Alor Setar on the mainland. We hope he made it.

Anyway we are both all better now and flew out of Langkawi on the 4th of August and are currently in Mt Bryan in South Australia with Andy and Robyn. We will then take our little Rosie for a road trip and visit home for a while. We will have a slow drive to Sydney to catch up with Debbie and Brett and then head north to Yamba and then finally home to meet our newest grandchild and also to do cleaning and repairs on our very badly managed house. So to contact us just call Peter’s mobile and we will hope to catch up with you all very soon.

Happy Birthday Margaret for the 8th!

Much love
Happy to be home – its freezing but at least we have stopped sweating!!!
Happy Trails and Calm Seas
Dell and Peter

Dell, Peter & Pacific Express

About Us and Our Boat

Pacific Express is a 38 foot steel Ganley Timerider sloop with a 1.8m draft built in New Zealand in 1987. We purchased her Christmas 2004. We have completed the 2009 Indonesian Rally and cruised Thailand. In 2011 we joined the Sail Malaysia to the East rally and saw Borneo and Brunei. 2012 we have circumnavigated Palawan in the Philippines. We have included our anchorages for the Australian coast 2008 & 2009 and our Indonesian and Malaysian anchorages with lats and longs - they appear in the January 2010 entries. We arrived back at Newport Marina, Brisbane on 9th December 2012.